British Columbia

A New Historical Atlas

Winner of the Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for Historical Writing, the BC Book Prizes' Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, the Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award, and the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia.

Over 900 maps tell the story of the planners, schemers, gold seekers and fur traders who built Canada's westernmost province.

When gold was discovered in quantity in 1858, leading to the gold rush that created British Columbia, the interior of the province was mostly unknown except for the routes blazed by fur traders. Thirteen years later, British Columbia became a province of Canada, and a transcontinental railway was built to connect the land west of the Rocky Mountains with the rest of the country.

The efforts of these explorers, fur traders, gold seekers and railway builders involved the production of maps that showed what they had found and what they proposed to do -- the plans and the strategies that created the province we know today. Master map historian Derek Hayes continues his renowned Historical Atlas Series with a richly rewarding treasure trove, bringing to light the dramatic history of British Columbia.

Ranging from maps by early Aboriginal inhabitants and by the Europeans who arrived to explore and exploit the province's vast resource wealth -- to the maps drawn by those who, decades later, prepared for war, built dams and tracked murders -- the over 900 maps in this collection, two-thirds of which are published for the first time, reveal the thoughts and plans of the dreamers, explorers and dynasty makers who built today's British Columbia. This is a history of both the dreams that came true and those that didn't -- yet all are part of the dramatic tale of the forging of Canada's western frontier.